Chapter 36
Mac
Just because she came back to the house doesn't mean that she won't tell me to pack my stuff and get out the second we step inside.
She makes it to the porch and opens the door before I can take the steps up to the door. I don't know how to read the way she leaves the door open for me to enter. It may be just to make it easier to get my shit and leave, and that is possibly how this will go, but we'll have a conversation before that happens.
I'm exhausted with the way my brain hasn't had the chance to turn off in what feels like years. I'm not normally a man who doesn't know what his tomorrow is going to look like.
"I guess we need to talk," she says when I make it into the house.
She's standing across the room, arms crossed over her chest, and I hate the protective stance she thinks she needs to take.
Is she angry?
Is she sad?
Has she geared herself up to reject me?
What in the world happened from the kiss in my house yesterday to her avoiding me?
I open my mouth to speak, but I don't know how to have this conversation without making her run for the hills.
I want nothing more than for this woman to be the one to pack all of her things and come back with me. I want her to make my house our home. I want to watch her belly grow with my babies.
These are all things I never once would've considered before, and just the idea of them makes me a little worried that what she wants looks nothing like what I've been picturing.
I can't force my wants and needs onto her, and for the first time in my life, I'm terrified that things won't line up for me. This isn't something that I can put more effort into. I can't get up early and work hard to make this happen. If it isn't what she wants, then I somehow have to be okay with it.
My hands tremble, forcing me to shove them in my pockets. I can't recall another time when I've been so afraid of what someone might say to me.
When my father passed, we knew it was coming. His death was decades in the making. The man worked hard to take care of his family and never once thought about taking care of himself, so we lost him much too young.
"Riley," I whisper as I approach her.
Her eyes glitter as she looks up at me, and I swear the woman looks like she's about to cry.
I run my hand down her arm, and to my credit, she doesn't immediately pull away from my touch, but the idea that she's just tolerating me standing in front of her until she tells me to leave eats away at me.
"I think you're the sexiest woman I've ever laid eyes on," I confess, doing exactly what Sage urged me to do.
I know I've told her this before, but I can't recall if she was clothed at the time or not.
"If I've ever said or done anything that made you doubt that I think that, then I want to apologize for it. It was never my intention."
Instead of her looking relieved, her face transforms, her eyes narrowing and her lips turning into a flat line.
"Have you spoken with Sage?"
"Yes," I answer without hesitation. "I'll never lie to you, Riley. You can ask me anything, and even if I know it's going to hurt you, I'll tell you the truth."
She takes a step back as if she needs some distance from me, and even though I hate even the idea of space between us, I don't move back into her space.
"The closet," she says.
Two words bring me back to a very different time in our lives, and they make my heart race like it never has before.
"The closet," I whisper. "Not talking to you after was the hardest thing I'd ever done."
"So you do remember?"
I lick at dry lips before responding. I know it is literally the worst time for my body to get lost in those memories because of the trajectory everything took not even twelve hours after.
"I do remember. How could I forget? It was the best kiss of my life, and it was what could've landed me in jail."
"Jail?" she asks .
I pull in a deep breath. I'm sure it's been long enough that there's nothing that can be done about it now as far as the police are concerned, and Lord knows we've done so much more in the last several weeks, but the same fear that wrapped around me the next day played a huge part in how I behaved.
"I assaulted you," I say, guilt for what I'd done wrapped around me to the point that it becomes difficult to pull in a full breath.
"What?" she asks, shaking her head. "You didn't assault me."
"Corbin said I did."
"What the hell does Corbin have to do with any of this?"
"I'm not proud of this, so please don't get mad. Keep in mind I was a teen boy, and although that's no excuse, I'm a different man now."
Her eyes narrow even further. "Could you just explain?"
"I bragged about touching your boob," I blurt. "We were in the weight room at the school the next day, and I bragged about making out with you and touching your breast."
"Okay," she says, cocking her hip out as if what I'm saying isn't enough of an explanation.
"I don't know if you remember, but my dad held me back before kindergarten."
"Nearly every boy around here was red-shirted, Mac."
"I turned eighteen in June that year. You were underage. I was an adult when I touched your breast. Corbin, you know he was even acting like an attorney back then, told me I could go to jail."
"Are you kidding me right now?" she growls. "You were worried about going to jail?"
I swallow. "I felt like a complete asshole, Riley. I touched you, and you stopped me. I did something you didn't want, and I could've gone to jail for it. I don't know which part made me feel the worst. I never meant to hurt you. I'd wanted to get you alone for so long."
"This is unbelievable," she growls, spinning around, giving me her back, and running her hands through her long blonde hair.
"You wanted the truth," I remind her.
Her face is flame-red when she turns back to face me.
"You didn't assault me."
"You wanted me to stop."
"I wanted you to slow down. I couldn't go from my first kiss straight to second base without a breath."
"First kiss?" I ask because there's no damn way.
"First kiss, Mac. "
I swear my body loves the fucking sound of that.
"I feel like I'm in some sort of alternate reality. You wanted to kiss me?"
"And touch your breasts," I clarify. "Every guy in the locker room did. You've got great tits, Riley."
She huffs a humorless laugh, but I have to continue in the name of full disclosure and all that.
"What I didn't consider was our age difference. Now that I think about it, Corbin probably said that to me to get me out of the way."
"He had a girlfriend," she mutters, rejecting the idea.
I point to her breasts because, honestly, they explain everything. "Teen boys are idiots, but nonetheless, I let him get in my head, and I figured you hated me. I think after you didn't speak to me after that, I figured you hated me. I've avoided you ever since until that night at the bar."
"This is…" she pauses, blinking at me as if I'm some sort of anomaly. "Do you have any idea how different things could've been?"
I pull in a slow breath. "I'm well aware of the time we've lost because I was out of line."
"You have to let that shit go. You're not that much older than me."
"The age difference doesn't matter now, but it did back then. Your dad would have beat my ass."
"My dad wasn't present enough to care," she mutters, and I can feel years of pain and abandonment in her words. "I don't want to live in the past."
"I don't want to either."
A brief silence settles between us as we watch the other's face, and I feel content to just be sharing the same space with her, but I'm here to have the hard conversations. What happened in high school doesn't matter any longer, no matter how much it shaped who I am today.
"Nothing has changed for me, Riley," I confess. "I want you more now than I did back then."
"Because I have great tits," she blurts with a scoff.
"I find you utterly irresistible, but I know there's so much more to you than your luscious body."
"My cooking," she adds.
"More than that."
"I don't know what to do with all this information," she whispers. She walks toward the sofa and takes a seat as if she's been holding up the weight of the world on her shoulders and she just can't manage the strain any longer.
"It's simple. Tell me how you feel."
I expect a smile, but what I get is her scrunching up her nose and looking at me like I have a second head growing out of my neck.